York-led project puts communities at heart of clean water solutions

More than 1.5 million children under five years old are estimated to die each year from diarrhoeal diseases caused by unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation.

But providing clean, safe water to remote communities in the developing world remains a challenge as there is often not the infrastructure in place to deliver it.

To reduce rates of diarrhoeal disease in remote communities, researchers at York University are developing monitoring technologies to allow local people to test the quality of their water supplies.

At any one time, approximately 1.8 billion people worldwide are accessing contaminated water, according to project leader Dr Steven Johnson.

“If we build a centre that the community could use, which would allow them to test the quality of their water, they could then decide whether to drink that water [as it is], access water from a different source, or to treat the water,” said Johnson.

The researchers are working with Oxfam and communities in Vanuatu, a collection of 80 islands in the South Pacific, which is known as the most disaster-prone country in the world. Following Tropical Cyclone Pam in March 2015, for example, half of the population went without clean drinking water for one month after two thirds of water and sanitation infrastructure was destroyed.

The technology will be co-developed with the local community, in a process the researchers have dubbed Integrated Participatory Technology Development, to ensure the resulting systems meet the needs, skills and environment of those living locally.

The co-development team will focus on two types of sensing technology, as part of the project, which is being funded by the EPSRC through the Global Challenges Research Fund.

The presence of faecal coliform bacteria is typically detected by taking samples of water and growing any bacteria present on a plate, which can then be examined under a microscope.

“Rather than using an expensive microscope, we hope to use optical components similar to those inside a CD ROM drive, and combine it with some image processing, to automatically identify faecal coliform bacteria,” said Johnson.

The team will also investigate the use of nano-electronic and nano-photonic devices, integrated with probe molecules that bind to specific biological molecules within the water that are associated with the bacteria.

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“we hope to use optical components similar to those inside a CD ROM drive,”
What a stunning idea: doing for 10p what any fool can do for £1
I recall well a scientific instrument maker in the 70s believing that they needed to develop a very sophisticated ‘spirit-level’ to ensure that an instrument was properly ‘zeroed’ -and finding that one from a domestic weigh scale (from his wife’s kitchen!) worked with sufficient accuracy and cost a few pounds (about 1,000 times less than the one originally designed!)

MB: optical components similar to CD ROM _ What a stunning idea: doing for 10p what any fool can do for £1 + HK: investigate nano-electronic and nano-photonic probe molecules that bind to specific biologicals :: latter somewhat spoils former don’t you think especially with gram stain standards ubiquitous so not even “refreshingly free of hype & superlatives” as accompanying item on steam engines # practicalities prompted recall of my pair of 90s DTI SMARTees on wind-aided WWT principled prototyped patented (required) pitched for impoverishment improvement but dumped after quarter mill murdered not making market only to be deutsche durtchtecnicked a decade later with VAWT deemed bestyet mesoscale manifestation but was merely not NASA’s but NACA’s best bet for stall tolerance, likewise 4-stage treatment for BOD-NOD-deN-SSD in concentric annuli aerated by racetrack snorkel eliminating gearloss & electroloss! Exemplar for excellence in english inspiration & international exploitation!

When I worked at an industrial research institute, my boss needed a mixer to handle 50kg quantities of fish meal powder(imagine powder like coarse sawdust). His boss had approved his request for an expensive custom-made mixer, but the mixer would have to be made overseas, and the delivery time was 3 months.

I found out about this over a cup of tea, and asked why doesn’t he just use a concrete-mixer? And it could even be fitted with an electric motor for use inside the lab. My boss hadn’t thought of this at all – his was a world was of expensive, sophisticated equipment. Not the ordinary stuff that a builder would use.

But he jumped at the thought, we got a telephone quote in less than an hour, and within the week, we took delivery of a brand-new electric concrete-mixer at 1/20 of the cost of the original budgeted item. All from a casual remark over a cup of tea.